Train to run, eat to run

This week I had my first session with Anna (the nutrition and inspiration coach I mentioned before). The first session was just a general discussion over food. I had written down what I had eaten the last couple of days prior to talking.

In short I was eating far too little. I had averaged about 1800 calories a day, and with my level of training I should be eating 2700. Mainly I was eating too little fruit and vegetables, and too little fat. It was interesting to hear how lack in certain food will impact your body's performance differently.

We also discussed the Vasaloppet race and what was needed for that. During the race you will use up about 8000-9000 calories. This will be a great way for me to try out how to prepare for a long race in terms of food intake, and how to eat during the race. I guess ordering Pizza like Dean Karnazes do for his long runs is out of the question (for the ones of you that have not read Dean's book "The Ultramarathon man", I can highly recommend it). He ordered a Pizza to be delivered to a long country road and said "I am the guy running along the road, and in 30min time I should be around junction X". I think the delivery guy would have problems identifying me amongst the other thousands of people at the Vasaloppet! And for Namibia I am pretty certain we are out of range for most pizza delivery places anyhow *smile*.

I'll get back to you on what I'll settle for in terms of race food, but this should be an interesting one... Probably as important as the training itself for ultra distance races.

By the way, this week I learned how many people will be racing with me in Namibia. About 20 people, that is all! I thought this was going to be a pretty special race that wont maybe appeal to everyone, but 20 people seems very little! That will be the opposite end of the scale to Vasaloppet where your first hour is spent in waiting for people in front to get up for the first hill. On the positive side I might be able to do what Ben and I have tried a couple of times. A very fast sprint the first couple of hundred meters and I should be able to say that I was leading the inaugural run of the Namib Ultra Marathon :-)